The Primitive Is the Product
Product success comes from identifying and focusing on the "primitive" — the core action a product enables — rather than features or technology. The best products strip down to their essential user behavior and obsess over that primitive above all else.
Background
- This post argues that the most valuable AI companies will be those that control the "primitive" layer — the core capability (e.g., model inference, reasoning tokens) that developers build applications on top of. The author draws an analogy: APIs are the new CPUs, and usage-based pricing (charging per token or per compute unit) is the new business model.
- The author, Matt Bornstein, is a partner at Amplify Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage enterprise tech and developer infrastructure.
- The post is part of a long-running debate in tech: whether value accrues at the infrastructure layer (the platform) or the application layer. The author's claim is that in AI, the infrastructure layer (the "primitive") is so central and defensible that it becomes the product itself, not just a commodity foundation.
- This reframes how to evaluate AI startups: instead of asking which app will win, the post suggests looking for the company that operates a fundamental, unpainted AI capability that others must pay to use repeatedly.